+Aten+ was a conception of the sun entirely different to Ra. No human or animal form was ever attached to it; and the adoration of the physical power and action of the sun was the sole devotion. So far as we can trace, it was a worship entirely apart, and different from every other type of religion in Egypt; and the partial information that we have about it does not, so far, show a single flaw in a purely scientific conception of the source of all life and power upon earth. The Aten was the only instance of a 'jealous god' in Egypt, and this worship was exclusive of all others, and claims universality. There are traces of it shortly before Amonhotep in. He showed some devotion to it, and it was his son who took the name of Akhenaten, 'the glory of the Aten,' and tried to enforce this as the sole worship of Egypt. But it fell immediately after, and is lost in the next dynasty. The sun is represented as radiating its beams on all things, and every beam ends in a hand which imparts life and power to {55} the king and to all else. In the hymn to the Aten the universal scope of this power is proclaimed as the source of all life and action, and every land and people are subject to it, and owe to it their existence and their allegiance. No such grand theology had ever appeared in the world before, so far as we know; and it is the forerunner of the later monotheist religions, while it is even more abstract and impersonal, and may well rank as a scientific theism. +Anher+ was the local god of Thinis in Upper Egypt, and Sebennytos in the Delta, a human sun-god. His name is a mere epithet, 'he who goes in heaven'; and it may well be that this was only a title of Ra, who was thus worshipped at these places. +Sopdu+ was the god of the eastern desert, and he was identified with the cone of glowing zodiacal light which precedes the sunrise. His emblem was a mummified hawk, or a human figure. +Nut+, the embodiment of heaven, is shown as a female figure dotted over with stars. She was not worshipped nor did she belong to any one place, but was a cosmogonic idea. +Seb+, the embodiment of the earth, is figured as lying on the ground while Nut bends over him. He was the 'prince of the gods,' the power that {56} went before all the later gods, the superseded Saturn of Egyptian theology. He is rarely mentioned, and no temples were dedicated to him, but he appears in the cosmic mythology. It seems, from their positions, that very possibly Seb and Nut were the primaeval gods of the aborigines of Hottentot type, before the Osiris worshippers of European type ever entered the Nile valley.